To TTC number 5 at my age

[number5isalive]

Hello everyone. Looking for some advice as I am so confused, and have been for about a year now!

I will try to keep this short. I have 4 lovely children, aged 9 down to 2 and a half. Very blessed to have conceived them all easily with no miscarriages in between.

DH and I were unsure about number 5, mainly due to logistics (how to fit them all in the car!!). But we decided to go for it and spent most of last year trying.

Unfortunately, we were quite aware of my age (I turned 40 last year) and kept setting ourselves deadlines - like another 3 months, or must give birth by age 41, or end of year, etc - which I can see now was probably a bit silly as it was too much pressure.

Anyway, we did manage to conceive in November, but then I suffered my first ever miscarriage. It was very early on, thankfully, but heartbreaking nonetheless as you get ahead of yourself and imagine the little one joining the family.

Since then I have been torn. I still have this lingering yearning for number 5, but I am also terrified of something going wrong. I will be 41 in May and I know the odds of something bad happening increase as you age. The logistics side of things bothers me less now and I know my kids will all get enough attention, but I am just so afraid of a later miscarriage or worse. If I had a crystal ball and could see the pregnancy would be trouble-free, I would go for it without hesitation. If only!

So, AIBU to be too afraid to try again and to think it's time to say our family is complete?

Thanks for reading.

Hmm. Personally, I would count your blessings. What impact would this have on your family, if there was a problem with the baby? Risks do increase with age. How would you cope with a child being in and out of hospital, for eg?

I think if you had 1 child, or none, I'd say go for it. But with 4 healthy children, no, I wouldn't think it was a good idea.

Also, do you still want to be doing the school run at 60?

I am somewhat biased though, as I am 47, DH is 44 and our children are adults and both away at Uni.

Have you discussed how you would deal with a problem identified in pregnancy? Are you on the same page, as in whether you would abort etc? That is an important chat to have, if you do ttc.

First of all, I am sorry about your loss OP.

We have four, and if it was up to me, I would have had five. Probably six. DH was dead against it and in the end we agreed for him to have the snip. I still occasionally struggle with the idea I will never had another child. I am 44 now, and my youngest is seven.

In many ways now I am happy my DH put his foot down. So many things have happened; redundancy, bereavement and also my career really taking off. All of this would have been harder with another baby.

I don't think the yearning ever really goes away. If you had 4 children, like me you love babies and all the process of raising a child. It is hard in many ways letting go. What I found helped was concentrating on my career, which I had virtually abandoned for 10 years. I still often dream I am pregnant and feel sad at times but it does get better.

I always rationalise that four children are a blessing and we made the right choice of our family.

I understand where you are coming from. I always wanted 4 and I am currently pregnant with my fourth. With 3 there was always a case of someone missing. I am nearly 38 and also facing my fourth Caesarian. This scares me but in my case my heart has ruled my head.

My decision to go ahead for a fourth was I didn't want to in years down the line have any regret and my surgeon did say one more wouldn't be the end of the world, not ideal I know, but not a definite no.

I hope you come up with a solution that your happy with and if you get pregnant just take each day as it comes, that's what I'm doing and I find the other 3 take my mind of my worries and I'm sure it would be the same for you.

There is another thread running at the moment about what it is like to grow up in a big family.

It's running to 10+ pages and apart from 3 posters, every single person who grew up in a big family says they hated it and many say they now resent their parents for it.

I know you keep shutting down anyone who points out that 4 is plenty, but I really encourage you to go and read this thread and see big family life through the eyes of the children thrown into it.

I know you've said you think you could cope, but coping and muddling along isn't ideal.

I had a stillbirth due to disabilities, and I was a wreck and shell of myself for a year. DH wasn't much better.
Thankfully I didn't have 4 other children to look after but if I did, I'm pretty sure they would have been permanently scarred by the whole thing.

Just not worth the risk when you've been so lucky to have a healthy family and mostly straight forward pregnancies

Huskylover1: Much as it pains us, we have agreed that we would probably not proceed with the pregnancy if something was picked up in the screening early on. We would have the advanced screening at 10 weeks so we would hopefully find out any issues very early on.

School run not an issue as we home educate.....holds breath and waits for more negative comments...!

You could just decide to neither try nor prevent by just carrying on as usual but not using contraception. If you get pregnant, you get pregnant. If you don't then t'wasnt meant to be. Incidents of anomalies does increase but overall still,tiny numbers.Fertility decreases but again not that dramatically for multigravidas. Just see what happens without pressure either way.

It's running to 10+ pages and apart from 3 posters, every single person who grew up in a big family says they hated it and many say they now resent their parents for it

Those kind of threads attract the moaners far more than the happy people, a bit like MN in general. Relationships and AIBU is full of people in unhappy marriages and/or with awful parents, that doesn't mean all marriages are unhappy or all parents are awful.

sparechange: I am really sorry for your loss.

I have read the thread about big families. I just don't think it applies to us. We home educate and DH and I both work from home with flexible hours so they have an awful lot more time with us than most kids have wither their parents and we never ever get them to babysit the younger ones and never will unless it's something they want to do.

I can't say it enough times - this is not a debate on the pros and cons of large families.

School run not an issue as we home educate.....holds breath and waits for more negative comments...!

Got for 6 more (and some qualifications) and you could have a reasonable class.

I think, if it were me, I'd consider myself lucky I had 4 healthy children and call it quits (on the TTC front).

As you get older the 'worst case scenarios' become more and more likely. Despite me agreeing with HE, most parents are trying their best. If your fifth needed extra attention for whatever reaosn (and with your age it's more likely), would you be able to continue home education? I suspect not.

Why are you so against discussing if large families are in the interest of the world etc? It seems a little bit like you know they aren't and have a 'la la la la, I can;t hear you' approach.

Op I just wanted to share with you that I do have a child with special needs ( she's number 4) and is on the asd spectrum , child number 5 is profoundly deaf and suffers with speech , having said that at times we struggle , (I ATM don't work. I gave up when number 4 was 10 she now 13 my husband work 60 hours a week in financing ) but i manage , I spends quality time with all my children , we have shopping trips individually and together , my older children love being pet of a large family and infant often ask are we having more (19,16,15, then there's 13,6 and 3)

Something else to consider....at the moment all of your children are under the same roof. Have you considered, what it will be like when they leave home? You could end up with 5 children in 5 different cities - very probable actually, if they go to Uni. Certainly my 2 are not in the same city. I still support them with some finances and practical stuff, like moving flats etc. Things start to get quite knarly when they are at High School/doing exams/having to get the grades for Uni/private tuition/driving lessons/first boyfriends/girlfriends.....there is still tons of emotional and practical support etc etc. Which of course you provide with all the love in the world. I guess I;m just saying, you might not feel like you are spreading yourself too thin now, but that may change when you are the support system for 5 young adults.

"Why are you so against discussing if large families are in the interest of the world etc? It seems a little bit like you know they aren't and have a 'la la la la, I can;t hear you' approach."

I'm not against it, but that's not what I'm here for today. I'm here for advice on the particular question I asked.

Why are you so against discussing if large families are in the interest of the world etc?

Well for one thing its a bit late when you already have a large family, and for another its not a real discussion, its just a load of sanctimonious people telling us how terrible we are for having more than 2 children. It's been done to death.
And lastly, we don't have to justify our choices to anyone.

madmoon, thanks for sharing that.

To other posters, I really am not trying to be awkward here but this wasn't meant to be a discussion on whether I can cope with 5 or whether it's good for the planet, etc, etc. I can discuss that elsewhere if I choose to.

I am just wondering if I am being irrational to let the health risks put me off at my age, when I already am lucky enough to have DC. I hope that makes sense.

I had a miscarriage with my 4th when I was 39. It was suggested by the doctors that maybe my body was telling me that was enough. I do have other health issues. Even 20 years on I still occasionally feel someone is missing from our family. However when I lost the baby my eldest was only 5 I had no idea of the hard work teenagers entail- and mine were actually quite easy. The expense as well is huge. Even with loans most need help with uni expenses and doing that for 5 would be tough unless you are high earners.

I was where you are a few years ago, considering going for number 4 @ 41, as that was the family I had always wanted.

However, after an MMC we desisted and stopped, counting our blessings for what we had. In the end, we felt that we couldn't take the risks of either another miscarriage (which nearly destroyed me) or the possibility of having a disabled child-I know there are great prenatal tests, but also I felt that 1) due to the 3 children we already had, that we wouldn't be able to do justice to them if we had a disabled child to add to the mix and 2) how much of a mess I would be if I had to contemplate an abortion if a baby had severe disabilities.

We have 3 happy healthy children, and a few years on, yes, I admit, i do have an occasional wistful moment, but...now they are getting older they do require so much more one to one time with me (DH works a huge number of hours). The youngest is 7, eldest 12-& the teenager years beckon! Young children are much easier as they don't require the in depth emotional support and homework assistance.

So what I am trying to say, is that I am happy with my lot and don't regret the decision we made.

If you want one go for it, we did and have never regretted the sixth. Fifth in fairness was actually fourth as twins. Health risks are minimal.

School run not an issue as we home educate...

So how would you cope with a child with disabilities? Who needed lots of hospital appointments either pre or post-natally, and how required lots of one-on-one time beyond the newborn stage?

It's arguably going to throw even more disruption into your life than if your children had the escape of school and school friends.

If you're with then 24/7 and providing their education, dealing with the emotional fallout of a miscarriage/stillbirth/disabled child is going to have a disproportionately huge impact on your existing children.

You are not unreasonable to stick at 4 children because of the higher risks at your age.

I'm pregnant with my 3rd at 33 and I've spent the entire pregnancy worrying about disabilities etc despite completely normal scans etc.

You cannot be sure a baby is healthy until after birth, scans are not infallible, neither is the new NIPT test, as it doesn't rule out everything.

We will be stopping here as the risk of having a disabled child will only rise and I don't think it is fair to place that burden on the children we already have.

If I was in your position, I would stop at the four healthy children you have. The risks would not be worth trying again, despite straightforward pregnancies before.

The number of children you already have does matter as if you had none or just one, the perceived benefits may outweigh the risks.

Sadly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage.
I was 30 when mine happened out of the blue 3 months in after 3 healthy pregnancies. I can understand your apprehension at trying after a loss.

I'm now 22 weeks with number 4. Glad I didn't give up, as it's what we wanted.

If you want and can manage a 5th, I'd say go for it.

"if I am being irrational to let the health risks put me off at my age, when I already am lucky enough to have DC"

Of course it's not irrational to come to that conclusion. Most people would would easily understand quitting while you're ahead. For that matter, it would be rational to be put off by the health risks even if you had no other children already.

Did you need someone's permission?

I would secretly have loved to squeeze out no 5 or 6 but, at 41 and with 4 teenagers, I know how expensive they are. REALLLLLLY expensive!! Especially if they're involved in a lot of out of school activities.

It's ultimately up to you and it's easy to think, "What's one more?" when your children are still very young. But looking towards the future, can you afford a 5th set of Uni fees, for example, when you're looking towards your imminent retirement?

Thanks for all the input. There is a lot to ponder over here. I wonder how mums of large families (or any size families for that matter) know they are "done". Would love to have that clarity. What I dread is deciding not to risk it now and then looking back on this moment a few years from now and regretting it when it's too late.